Now comes the question, in what position did this result of a mad theory and a hopelessly incompetent application of it on the part of Potsdam place our own Government?  It left us quite clearly in the position of the responsible policeman of the west.  There was nobody else in Europe strong enough to chain “the mad dog.”  Belgium and Holland, Norway and Sweden, Denmark and Switzerland could hardly have been expected to take that duty on themselves, even if Norway and Sweden had not good reason to be anti-Russian, and the Dutch capitalists were not half convinced that their commercial prosperity would be greater under German than under native rule.  It will not be contended that Spain could have done anything; and as to Italy, it was doubtful whether she did not consider herself still a member of the Triple Alliance.  It was evidently England or nobody.  For England to have refrained, from hurling herself into the fray, horse, foot, and artillery, was impossible from every point of view.  From the democratic point of view it would have meant an acceptance of the pretension of which Potsdam, by attacking the French Republic, had made itself the champion:  that is, the pretension of the Junker class to dispose of the world on Militarist lines at the expense of the lives and limbs of the masses.  From the international Socialist point of view, it would have been the acceptance of the extreme nationalist view that the people of other countries are foreigners, and that it does not concern us if they choose to cut one another’s throats.  Our Militarist Junkers cried “If we let Germany conquer France it will be our turn next.”  Our romantic Junkers added “and serve us right too:  what man will pity us when the hour strikes for us, if we skulk now?” Even the wise, who loathe war, and regard it as such a dishonour and disgrace in itself that all its laurels cannot hide its brand of Cain, had to admit that police duty is necessary and that war must be made on such war as the Germans had made by attacking France in an avowed attempt to substitute a hegemony of cannon for the comity of nations.  There was no alternative.  Had the Foreign Office been the International Socialist Bureau, had Sir Edward Grey been Jaures, had Mr. Ramsay MacDonald been Prime Minister, had Russia been Germany’s ally instead of ours, the result would still have been the same:  we must have drawn the sword to save France and smash Potsdam as we smashed and always must smash Philip, Louis, Napoleon, et hoc genus omne.

The case for our action is thus as complete as any casus belli is ever likely to be.  In fact its double character as both a democratic and military (if not Militarist) case makes it too complete; for it enables our Junkers to claim it entirely for themselves, and to fake it with pseudo-legal justifications which destroy nine-tenths of our credit, the military and legal cases being hardly a tenth of the whole:  indeed, they would not by themselves justify the slaughter